A collection of tools to help with the Google Reader shutdown.

Using Google Reader's reanimated corpse to browse archived data.

Takes an archive generated by reader_archive and provides a browsing UI for it. The browsing UI is using a saved copy of Reader's JavaScript and CSS, thus it should behave almost exactly like Reader.

To use it:

bin/zombie_reader ~/Downloads/reader_archive

http://localhost:8074/ will then load in your browser (you can also open it manually). You will see the familiar Reader interface. All subscriptions, folders and tags should be clickable. The "Home" page has been repurposed to display some stats about your archive as well as links to archived data that cannot be reached through the normal Reader interface (mainly sharing-related data).

For a demo of this tool, see this screencast.

Look up an item in an archived Google Reader account.

Takes an archive generated by reader_archive and provides a command-line UI for examining items within it.

To use it:

bin/item_lookup --archive_directory=~/Downloads/reader_archive 0306277b9d275db1

The tool will then list all of the streams that the item appears in, the item body, and any comments made on that item. You can provide multiple item IDs (as additional command line arguments).

Browse an archived Google Reader account.

Still under development

Takes an archive generated by reader_archive and provides a browsing UI for it. Unlike zombie_reader, this tool uses an interface built from the ground up for browsing, thus it can display data more efficiently. It can also handle data that the Reader UI no longer knows how to display (e.g. comments on shared items).

To use it:

bin/reader_browser ~/Downloads/reader_archive

Then you can load http://localhost:8071/ in your web browser to see the contents of the archive.

Now that Google Reader has been shut down, some of the initial tools (focused on getting the data out) are no longer useful. They were:

• reader_archive: Saved a comprehensive archive of a Google Reader account.
• feed_archive: Saved public feed data from Google Reader's feed cache.